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Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

bloomberg.com

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Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#321

Post by daydream »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #311
katbyte wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s weird to me people forget how bad vision can be for driving and Exocet Tesla to somehow be better then our own eyes. How often a do you encounter situations like bad fog/sun set/rain at night where it’s a total struggle to drive and you slow right down to a crawl and even then only do alright because of a ton of inference? i think Tesla deciding to go vision only will be regarded of one of the greatest blunders…

The counterargument to this is that since humans reach acceptable safety levels with vision only, it must be possible to do self driving with vision only. That said, augmenting vision with other methods does seem like a no brainer for better performance.

The counterargument to THAT is that human safety levels aren’t acceptable. They are tolerable perhaps, but I wouldn’t call the number of accidents and fatalities we have today acceptable.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#322

Post by CogitoCogito »

JamesianP wrote: post #134
davidgerard wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will create. just think of the huge economic value that faster-than-light travel will unlock!! you're assuming your conclusion

But we know driving is possible because people can do it.

I don't think anyone here questions the fact the humans are able to operate motor vehicles.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#323

Post by joakleaf »

nichochar wrote: post #283
cs702 wrote: post #185

In the short run, technological progress is much slower than anyone hopes, but in the long run it is much faster than anyone expects. My favorite example is that in 1987, the scientific consensus was that it would take "at least 100 years" and likely much longer to sequence the entire human gnome.[a] But the vast majority of it was sequenced by 2000, only 13 years later. Moreover, just two decades later, anyone could…

[Disclaimer] I worked for Cruise for 4 years. I agree with everything you said, but chuckled at this particular part (which is very wrong): > Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else. Everyone in the industry knows that Tesla is nowhere near the tip of the technology. What Tesla does is _fantastic marketing_. Their whole self-driving division is just a mechanism to sell more cars. At a high level, this is why: -…

As someone who also follows the progress online and watch the presentations by Cruise, Tesla, etc, I agree that Cruise is well ahead of Tesla.

It feels like Tesla’s main strategy is to add more data, more compute power, more simulation, and hope for “convergence”. Maybe that will work, but right now it feels like Cruise’s technology feels more mature and thought through.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#324

Post by CogitoCogito »

feketegy wrote: post #28

I've said it before, if you truly want to experience what a real life raod looks like in most of the World, just go to Eastern Europe and create the test models there.

In my experience, roads in Czechia and Slovakia are better than much of (most?) of the US. But I can't speak for Eastern Europe in general. (And I guess those countries would prefer to be called Central Europe anyway...)

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#325

Post by binarymax »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #311
katbyte wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s weird to me people forget how bad vision can be for driving and Exocet Tesla to somehow be better then our own eyes. How often a do you encounter situations like bad fog/sun set/rain at night where it’s a total struggle to drive and you slow right down to a crawl and even then only do alright because of a ton of inference? i think Tesla deciding to go vision only will be regarded of one of the greatest blunders…

The counterargument to this is that since humans reach acceptable safety levels with vision only, it must be possible to do self driving with vision only. That said, augmenting vision with other methods does seem like a no brainer for better performance.

We have a lot more signal than vision only. For example audio, the “feel of the road”, like feedback on the steering wheel and traction that we physically experience. Most of all we have actual intelligence and reasoning - not just pattern recognition.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#326

Post by maleldil »

sneak wrote: post #310
oliveshell wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radar, ultrasonic proximity sensors, and/or LIDAR, presumably. Tesla has famously removed all radar/ultrasonic sensors from their newer cars in favor of a purely camera-based system.

How do humans drive without these sensors?

With superior reasoning abilities. Extra sensors generating more data make reasoning simpler.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#329

Post by spikels »

SergeAx wrote: post #282
oblio wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be blunt about this. Most of this research is funded in the US and the hyper individualistic Americans as a group don't believe in public transport.

Self driving tech could and will be applied to public transportation too. With self-driving mini-buses we can serve more destination much more efficiently, fine-tuning commute supply to better fit the exact demand.

This is probably a good model for the future of public transit. We use large buses because of the high cost of drivers. For less popular routes and times it currently doesn’t make sense but self-driving mini-buses would.

At least in SF there has been little discussion due to the influence of the unlicensed transit unions. The idea of eliminating drivers can’t even be discussed.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#330

Post by subroutine »

Retric wrote: post #259
subroutine wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the argument self driving car companies are currently trying to make. My contention is this reason doesn't seem compelling to the general public. For whatever reason the public seems more tolerant of human error than machine error. At this point anyway. I foresee a long period of trust-building before widespread adoption. An interesting experiment would be for Uber to send two cars for pickup, one human and o…

That’s fair. I suspect we are at least 30 years from a drunk to be legally able to order their self driving car home without issue simply due to cultural inertia. Assuming we get to that point it will probably be another 20 years after that before non self driving is seen in the same way as driving a motorcycle is today. Aka something that’s not suicidal, but defiantly excessively dangerous.

I'd agree with that estimate. But sheesh, 50 years from now seems like forever.

Two final thoughts...

(1) Maybe within the next 50 years devs can instill into AI, some meaning of death. As it is, I find some comfort knowing my driver realizes the difference between a field and a 40-foot cliff along the coast of Big Sur, and our shared theory of mind regarding the consequence of swerving to avoid something in those situations.

(2) Regarding humans being more tolerant of human error. I think this might be because when a human gets in an accident, there is always the ability to reason that person is different than us: old, tired, drunk, distracted, etc. And both the situation and the cognition are unique to one person. Naturally, we would have done something different to avoid the accident, we reason. If an AI gets into an accident, and we know that same exact AI is driving 10 million cars, including our own, that freaks us out a little.

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